Exclusive Q&A: CitrusAd unifies grocery shopper data
A new digital platform enables multiple grocery retailers to open their customer bases to targeted CPG ads.
In a recent exclusive conversation with Chain Store Age, Lauren Malaguti, VP, GroceryOne media sales, CitrusAd, explained why the retail media network provider is delivering access to customers from a range of grocery retailers on a single platform, known as GroceryOne.
[Read more: CitrusAd connecting CPG brands to shoppers across multiple grocers]
What general benefits can a retailer obtain from a media network?
Setting up and maintaining an e-commerce business for retailers is expensive. Most retailers lose money on every order that goes out the door due to the technology, fulfillment and last mile costs associated with e-commerce. A retailer's e-commerce website, data, and even in-store media are monetization opportunities that can build a retail media network (RMN).
Unlike the tight margins in retail, a RMN provides high-margin media dollars to help balance a retailer's profit & loss sheet. RMN is also an opportunity to offset marketing costs using supplier dollars to promote offsite media and drive new, existing and lapsed consumers to purchase.
Most retailers have long looked to their brands to fund in-store marketing, so online marketing is a natural extension.
As GroceryOne allows brands to target customers and grow sales at scale via one platform, across many retail accounts, it offers access to different budgets outside of trade and shopper marketing.
Brands desire the ability to launch campaigns with ease and not have to login to platform after platform with each one having varying features and analytics.
GroceryOne also provides real-time reporting dashboards. Strength in numbers attracts advertising budgets that would be difficult to obtain as a standalone proposition.
What are the general benefits for a brand advertiser?
GroceryOne enables CPG brands to leverage first party data in real time to easily maximize sales and grow market share. Advertisers can leverage the platform as it pinpoints and reaches consumers in the lower marketing funnel, at the point-of-purchase, which leads to increased sales.
Campaigns support brand awareness, launch new products and drive incremental sales for CPGs, but the biggest benefit is utilizing the platform's first-party data reporting and analytics at scale, in real-time to determine which activity, targeting and shoppers have the highest impact to sales and generate the most lifetime consumer value for the brand.
How does GroceryOne provide access to multiple grocers on one platform?
Brands and agencies can access the platform through our self-serve platform, CitrusAd's managed services team, or via aggregated platforms like Pacvue and Skai which have directly integrated into CitrusAd’s open API.
What made CitrusAd decide to offer GroceryOne?
Bringing retailer offerings together through one easy activation provides a smart solution for everyone. The U.S. has a highly segmented market for grocery. While a few partners dominate the market, there are a large number of grocery stores throughout the US who have significant sales and in aggregate represent a huge piece of the overall market - more than Amazon and Instacart combined.
As these grocers increasingly stand up their own e-commerce sites, GroceryOne represents an opportunity for these retailers to band together to command the attention of national agencies and brand teams, in addition to the trade and shopper marketing dollars that come directly to a retailer.
It also provides built-in demand for new retailers who want to stand up a program, but do not have the personnel or media experience to stand up their own program in-house.
How have retailers and advertisers responded?
There’s a great deal of excitement from brands looking for more efficient and relevant ways to drive their business at scale and reach shoppers across the whole nation.
Retailers see the opportunity to remove the gaps from on-site, off-site and in-store with one RMN source that offers the full customer journey that is fully tracked and measured. The retailer growth especially has fueled the increase in supplier participation.
Are there any future plans for GroceryOne you can discuss?
Over the coming months, GroceryOne will grow in size and expand innovation. We will be launching new features, capabilities, reporting metrics, and helping our retail accounts move towards retail media that spans the full customer journey.
With that breadth offering, brands, retailers and shoppers can all continue to win. GroceryOne will have new retailers joining the platform by the end of this year and into next year. The continued growth will help further brand participation and interest.
Additionally, we will be working to integrate our retailers on GroceryOne into our unified platform, adding offsite opportunities (with retailer opt-in) into one easy platform.